The Focus provides links to articles collected from major newspapers and magazines, and is emailed weekly.This
Week in Atheism is a cable show that discusses the articles featured
below, every Wednesday at 6:30 PM (EST), Manhattan Cable station 57. Live streaming is available at: http://www.mnn.org.

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 23, 2008) — The existence of the supercontinent Pangea, which formed
about 300 million years ago and broke up about 200 million years ago, is a
cornerstone of plate tectonics, and processes resulting in its assembly and
fragmentation have governed the evolution of Earth's crust for 500 million
years...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080822093722.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 23, 2008) — Though skin cancer is deadly to male fish, it also has one
perk: The black melanoma splotches arise from attractive natural markings that
lure female mates. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences this week shows...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080818184305.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 23, 2008) — A stalagmite in a West Virginia cave has yielded the most
detailed geological record to date on climate cycles in eastern North America
over the past 7,000 years. The new study confirms that during periods when
Earth received less solar radiation, the Atlantic Ocean
cooled, icebergs increased and precipitation fell, creating a series of
century-long droughts...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819092017.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 22, 2008) — ETH Zurich biologists, led by Professors Martin Ackermann and
Wolf-Dietrich Hardt, in collaboration with Michael Doebeli of the University of
British Colombia in Vancouver (CN), have been able to describe how random
molecular processes during cell division allow some cells to engage in a
self-destructive act...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080821164308.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 22, 2008) — Paradoxically, the photoreceptor cells in our retinas release
more of their neurotransmitter, glutamate, in the dark, when there is nothing
to see, than they do in the light. This is doubly surprising since although
glutamate is a major signaling molecule in the retina...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080813101953.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 22, 2008) — The systematics of celestial bodies apparently needs to be
revised. Researchers at the Argelander Institute of Astronomy of the University of Bonn have discovered that brown dwarfs
need to be treated as a separate class in addition to stars and planets...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080822085113.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 22, 2008) — A new recycling plant will soon recover uranium from the
ashes of radioactive garbage to be recycled back into nuclear fuel using an
efficient, environmentally friendly technology inspired by decaffeinated
coffee...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080821213606.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 22, 2008) — Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have theorized a
way to increase the speed of pulses of light that bound across chains of tiny
metal particles to well past the speed of light by altering the particle
shape...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819160155.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 21, 2008) — Pregnant women who endure the psychological stress of being
in a war zone are more likely to give birth to a child who develops
schizophrenia. New research supports a growing body of literature that
attributes maternal exposure to severe stress during the early months of
pregnancy to an increased susceptibility to schizophrenia in the offspring..http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080820194845.htm

ScienceDaily
(Aug. 21, 2008) — Black holes are sometimes huge cosmic beasts, billions of
times the mass of our sun, and sometimes petite with just a few times the sun's
mass. But do black holes also come in size medium? A new study suggests that,
for the most part, the answer is no...http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080820210740.htm

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